The Dootsie Has Spoken

Fall Food Reviews

Hiram Walker Pumpkin Spice Schnapps ($9.49 at our local liquor mart): This is a tiny bit oily and an alarming shade of orange (I honestly thought the bottle was orange and was surprised when I poured it out in the glass!) This was really yummy to me. I can’t imagine just drinking a ton of it on its own–it has that dry mouthfeel that many spice-flavoured products do–but it’s not cloying or fakey tasting. I tried dropping this in some apple cider and I didn’t love it. It tasted very buttery over the acid of the cider. I’m still trying to figure out a good cocktail to use this in. I’m going to try hot cocoa next.

Hood Pumpkin EggNog ($3.50ish at Kroger): THIS STUFF. Imagine you were making a pumpkin pie and you were like–screw it–so you put the filling in the blender with some ice cream. That’s what this is like. It’s very smooth, very creamy and very pumpkiny. It contains actual pumpkin!

Twizzler’s Caramel Apple ($3ish at Wal-Mart): The bag smelled very strongly of green apple candy, so I was very hopeful. The green twizzlers with caramel filling have an appearance that’s a little off putting. The Twizzler doesn’t have much flavour and is very soft. The caramel is soft but has a sugar crunch to it. The taste and texture is reminiscent of Cowtails. I just didn’t like these, but my boyfriend really did.

Mama Walker’s Maple Bacon Schapps ($9.50ish at our local liquor mart): Going into this stuff, I didn’t hold out much hope. Fake bacon flavour is an abomination and paired with fake maple, FOR-GET-IT. This really surprised me! The flavour leans more on maple and tastes much more like syrup than Mrs. Butterworth’s manages! The bacon is more of a smoky aftertaste. This gets a thumbs-up from me!

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4 thoughts on “Fall Food Reviews”

Oh Lordy… I have not even thought about any type of Schnapps since… well, college I guess ( ok and maybe some time afterward ). At the time it was all about the peppermint Schnapps, especially with hot cocoa. Schnapps and hot cocoa is pretty much always a winner. Also we flirted heavily with the MIdori melon liqueurs. But I digress..

Would love to get my hands on pumpkin egg nog! Sometimes pumpkin tastes don’t translate but this sounds perfect. Suspect I’ll never find it though. [sob]

Man what is it with the Twizzlers?? I feel like it’s a generational thing. Nobody I know who’s my age can abide them. ( Including me : seriously what did they do to licorice to make it taste so bad?? ) Everybody younger loves them. ( Ok I know you panned this particular flavor but I bet you like Twizzlers in general. ) I feel like I missed a meeting with the Twizzlers.

Bad news: hood is almost exclusively an East Coast product.
The good news is twofold: one, some other brands produce their own and two, you can just glop some pumpkin puree with pumpkin pie spices in eggnog and it’ll come out just fine.
I was having this discussion with my boyfriend the other day. Basically, there are two camps on red licorice: Team Twizzlers and Camp Red Vine. I like both, but they satisfy totally different tastes for me. I happen to HAAAAAAAATE black licorice, so I’ve got no opinions on that end.

Or I could make pumpkin pie and drink it instead of baking it. Sounds gross, huh. But really isn’t that what pumpkin eggnog is: cream and eggs ( eggnog ), pumpking puree and spices. Ha ha… yeah, I’ll get riiiight on that.

I’m with you on the black licorice. It’s repellent.

When I was young there were a lot more licorice choices. [And by licorice I mean “not Twizzlers”. Twizzlers are really a soft chewy candy that just happen to be licorice shaped…and taste like a petrochemical swamp. Now Red Vines might *be* a petrochemical swamp but it doesn’t taste like it.]

Anyway : licorice choices. We had them. i was particularly fond of the “laces” — the thin spaghetti-like strands of proper licorice. You can still find them online. But they used to run wild, like American buffalo. Now they’re driven underground by the scourge of Twizzlers. Bah.

Haha oh I adore you. 🙂
So I’ve been looking at pumpkin pie recipes because I do that sort of thing in September and everyone’s recommending for the smoothest pie an equal parts blend of pumpkin and sweet potato puree, strained before pouring in the crust. I may try it this year.
What brand does the licorice laces that are wrapped up in a little spiral? I like those.